Today's level of public acceptance of the gender counter cultures du jour shows that the opinion leaders have an ease with living in a delusion. Male and female is all that there is and ever will be.If that statement makes you angry, then you are being loyal to a delusion.

While it IS a mistake to reason from nature on what is moral for humans, nonetheless nature is far more complicated than most people think it is. Even human culture is far more varied than most people can imagine.

People who think it that traditional gender roles are part of the "natural" order, or that homosexuality doesn't exist "in nature", are simply wrong.

Because something exists in nature does not, per se, allow one to conclude that it is "natural". Nature, after all, sometimes produces a two-headed cow or a horse with 5 legs. No reasonable person would regard these cases as "normal".

There has been a strong taboo against homosexuality in human males in every society that has realized that dudes fucking other dudes in the ass causes bloody assholes, which tend to spread really bad diseases really quick. The fact that males of all sexual persuasions tend to enjoy multiple sexual partners whenever possible adds tremendously to the spread of disease.

@Seven Machos: Outside "urban America", people who attack, threaten, or harass gays are punished and censured just as they would be in "urban America". Our society's instituions protect gays from those who do not tolerate them. That's the opposite of "taboo".

Wow, it's rare that almost every commenter from every "side" of the issue (whatever the issue might be) is a complete and utter bloody asshole (bloody in the British sense).

From the tiresome pussy liberal appeals to science, to Seven Machos and his usual jockstrap-snapping, cudgel-wielding foul-mouthed-bore routine, it already stinks to high heaven in here.

To the science-appealing pussy liberals: human behavior, sexual or otherwise, needs no justification from nature or science. Stop trying to compare people to frogs or clownfish, it just makes you look pathetic and desperate. Human sexuality and human behavior justify themselves. End of story.

To the Bible-and/or-chest-thumping dullards: contemporary human behavior, sexual or otherwise, needs no justification from history. Tradition, in and of itself, is no automatic justification for human social/sexual behavior. Just because our semi-literate ancestors like to roast faggots on the grill doesn't recommend the continuance of the practice.

And Seven Machos: I know it's a common assumption of anus-obsessed fratboy types, but male homosexuality and anal sex do not always go hand-in-hand (or cock-in-ass, perhaps). From my extensive experience sleeping with straight/bi guys, I'm aware that you bitches tend to go straight for the butthole, but there's a whole spectrum of possibilities...

Bottom line [snicker]... dump the clownfish and the geckos, and try teaching the indentured public school students something useful like, I don't know, mathematics? English composition? Actual biology instead of feel-good biology?

@RuyDiaz: Not denying that humans have traditional gender roles. All I'm saying is that the natural world exhibits a great deal of variety in what the roles of the biological sexes are. It is not inappropraite for children to learn that, but it is inappropriate to try to draw moral lessons about human behavior from that fact as the Oakland lessons appear to do. That is an abuse of science.

Gabriel is a proud member of the Church of Dawkins: any mention of morality sends him into a reflexive tizzy in which he combs the taxonomical catalog to validate his worldview. I've never seen such a breathless and hamfisted reaction to others' opinions! Not even from knuckle-dragging Creationists.

But yes, let's build a moral code on the fact that reed fish are hermaphroditic. We can also incorporate gang rape among frogs into that moral code, too. War, as well, because chimps go to war and eat their enemies. Nature!

"Your better argument would be the acceptance of homosexuality in places like Kandahar or ancient Greece. I would argue that in those places the ass-fucking and disease connection never took root."

Homosexuality in Afghanistan and ancient Greece is/was almost always associated with either pederasty or with relationships of unequal station, usually an older, wealthy, powerful man and a young boy. Men of equal social status almost never become/became sexually involved; such relationships were as taboo as they are today outside of "urban America". Ancient Greece and modern (and ancient) Afghanistan aren't good "role models" for western homosexualists.

Ancient Greeks weren't into assfucking that much actually. Many of the depictions of male/male intercourse on Greek pottery depicts "intercrural" sex between older Greek men and boys or young, hot athletes.

Palladian -- I am very pro-gay, just like I am very pro-having sex outside of marriage.

I am merely pointing out that the taboos against those things exist because of the negative consequences of the action.

It's real bad to have a baby out of wedlock (particularly if it's happening a lot). If two people have unprotected straight sex the right couple days, a baby will occur.

It's real bad to get venereal diseases (particularly if it's happening a lot). If someone goes around having unprotected anal sex with multiple partners, that person is quite likely to end up with a venereal disease, probably a serious one.

These truths are self-evident. There's nothing anti-gay about saying that unprotected anal sex leads to disease.

"Another reason why the government should not be in the business of education."

And I agree with Skyler, even though I know he hates faggots. This "diversity" shit is a complete waste of time and money and the mental resources of children who are probably too smart to fall for this shit anyway.

If you are going to teach children biology, you need to teach the basics and the important. What they are using in their ideological indoctrination plan, is neither basic nor important. (It is odd or queer (sorry for the pun), but it is not even particularly odd or queer. (Want something to develop the imagination; try insect societies.)

@Gabriel: You've made countless comments, in this thread and others (hermaphrodites seem to draw you from the woodwork), to the effect that human values are arbitrary constructs, and you use examples from nature to validate that fantasy. Maybe you could clarify what you really mean so people like me don't just make stuff up!

Just a way of keeping kids during the day, so that both parents can work outside the home.

It's good to remember that back in the 19th century (from 1800 to 1899), American didn't have fancy universities. To go to them, the wealthy had to send their kids to paris. Or london. Hey, and german was considered a scientific language!

Still, there's nothing like a good book. And, the ability to be able to read and write. Given that video games have gotten to be popular in "culture shocked europe" ... I think the future of chalk and blackboards is highly over-rated anyway.

Kids in school? They know how to dink out. How to let their minds wander.

Nature seems to provide peer groups, so kids can learn from other kids.

Also, I realize that there's a lot you can do sexually as a gay male. But society -- risk-averse as it is -- sees things differently. Society sees -- or, better, believes -- that there is a much greater chance that two gay males will sooner rather than later end up ass-fucking. Thus, the strong taboo.

There is also a taboo against anal sex between males and females. It's not as strong, and likely never was. I'm not sure why. My guess would be the higher likelihood of monogamy. If two people are monogamous, they can ass-fuck to high heaven and nothing bad will happen (that affects society).

You're right, but I also don't believe this was the main reason for the taboo against male homosexuality. I think it's a lot more complicated than that.

And I hope you don't mind me getting all bitchy and calling you a fratboy. It was necessary for my "I hate everyone" argument.

As I said, desperately searching the natural world for justifications of human behavior is silly; ultimately futile and completely unnecessary. Knowing that fish do weird things doesn't make me "feel better" about myself and my actions. I actually don't remember anything in my (1980s era) public education that was geared toward making students "feel better" about themselves. I just remember algebra, and a really cool 7th grade science teacher who took us on a field trip on a research boat sampling sediment layers in the Chesapeake bay.

Bullying sucks. I'd be hard pressed to find an argument in favor of kids bullying. (Survival of the fittest, perhaps?)

It's been awhile since I've been on the playground, but it's my understanding that much bullying is rooted in violations of gender norms. People talk big about stopping bullying and, more generally, getting to the root of problems rather than offering bandaids. Well, here ya go. An attempt to get to the root of a problem.

Ultimately, I think this program was trying to speak to THAT. If not directly speaking to bullying, speaking to things found at the source of bullying these days.

You can agree or disagree with the controversial/political aspects. Since parents could pull their kids out for the AIDS talk, they certainly should have been granted the same for this one. But is the base lesson -- People are different. Different doesn't have to mean bad, gross, or scary. People are people. -- really that horrible?

As for the $, the $2000 (or however much it cost) is not going to make or break these kids' reading and math skills. C'mon. Would it really make a difference if the funds for this program were privately raised and donated by a (non-political) group? Is that the tipping point that would make it acceptable?

I think the universal has been either outright prohibition of human homosexuality. Sometimes some 'stuff' is allowed for certain people. Sometimes male homosexuality was allowed or required for certain people. But either outright prohibition or extensive regulation have been the norm.

(All the same, men so inclined have ignored the prohibition or evaded the regulations since there have been prohibition and regulations.)

Using science as an attempt to justify human sexual behavior is apt to backfire. It all depends on just how the scientific mustard is cut.

Once one sticks to mammalia, determinate heterosexuality becomes much more cut and dried. Many mammals exhibit bisexual behavior, especially when denied access to the opposite sex (e.g. cows will hump other cows if there's no bull around). However, fixed sexual preference for the same gender occurs in two mammalian species, sheep (about 6% of rams will not service ewes), and humans.

Notice two things: the lack of other primates among this list, and the fact that the two species that exhibit "fixed" homosexual behavior have been living in close proximity for thousands of years now.

Palladian -- No question that males who have multiple sex partners with just one ass-fucking in the mix can spread a great deal of venereal disease. We straight men are hampered in two ways:

1. In the long term, women tend to be monogamizers.

2. Lots of women refuse to be ass-fucked in the first place.

Having said all this, one thing that maybe I haven't made as clear as I should is that condom usage while ass-fucking anyone, gay or straight, prevents venereal disease. Birth control in general prevents birth. Thus, in places where there is widespread use of condoms and birth control, we see the taboos against out-of-wedlock sex and gay sex considerably relaxed.

I actually don't remember anything in my (1980s era) public education that was geared toward making students "feel better" about themselves.

I remember a considerable amount of touchy-feely stuff in my 80s era public ed. Two examples:

1. Second grade. Once/week the class would list the positive qualities of one student, and everyone wrote cards to that student.

2. 6th grade. For 1/4 of the year, everyone took a class about social issues. That's where I learned the word "clique". We read about kids in crappy situations and talked about how to handle them. (Parents doing drugs, your friends are making a slambook, good/bad touch, etc.)

I don't think it really did much, but I think 6th grade is too late to begin that kind of discussion. The playground lessons were already too ingrained.

It is not the money, but the school time wasted on crappy 'educational programs' like this one.

Okay, so let's make it an optional after school program. Does that make it any better/worse?

Hmm, maybe it was because I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where I was one of the few boys who took both home economics and "industrial arts". I was just as happy cooking Maypo as I was casting an aluminum George Washington bust.

So I had lunch with my friends at Racines which is a place near my home known for being gay-friendly for some reason that I do not understand. The food is not that good. Shortly after being seated another party takes a table nearby. They were four middle-aged couples got together. The odd thing about them was the men were dressed as women. Of course our attention was riveted to the table of eight women, four of them quite ugly. The men made no attempt to pass as real women. Their makeup was regrettable, their fashion choices were absurd, their mannerisms were masculine, all four made butt-ugly bitches with serious chips on their shoulders, while their apparently understanding wives were all attractive and feminine and lovely. This confounded us tremendously, we're usually not that stupefied by odd happenings. At our table we discussed why the men didn't at least try to look and behave as we imagined any self-respecting drag queen would do. Finally one in our group got us to understand we were asking the wrong questions, that it wasn't about any of that, it was about getting away with it, sort of like Halloween dress up in May. They were just proving they could go about in public shamelessly without bothering to do cross dressing well.

Apologies, this is the closest I got for a gender diversity story. Maybe had any of us had such a class we wouldn't have been so confused.

I remember a considerable amount of touchy-feely stuff in my 80s era public ed.

I remember a lot of ineffective Communist propaganda from my 80's/90's public education in Cuba. The lessons were so preposterous they didn't take. (Did you guys know that you are a backward society compared to Cuban socialism.)

I hated shop too. Though, in my defence, we never had materials, and the old tools were trying to kill us. Also hated technical drawing because of the 'pointless' neatness, and I wanted to learn math, not draw crap, damn it!

But I really hated English. Because, as I told one of my teachers in frustration: "why do I have to learn this anyway? It is not as if I'm ever gonna use it."

I loved shop class. I remember my 9th grade shop teacher, Mr Shervanick, who talked about Thomas Paine all the time and taught us how to use an offset printing press and how to bind books, as well as how to cast George Washington heads out of old aluminum cans.

1. No one here seems to be defending this as an admirable and proper subject for public school instruction. Well, is it?2. The CA Proposition 8 proponents were right, it has begun: the teaching, in our public schools, that adult single-sex marriages are really cool and a worthwhile choice for all adults, and good for kids too.3. Gender Spectrum trainer? C'mon. Because professional teachers don't want this reputation, the school hires some advocacy person who makes this their rice bowl. We've seen their ilk before: Diversity trainer, etc. Little Kevin Jennings wannabe's, extolling the virtues, techniques, and normalcy of diverse hedonistic teenage sex.

I wish I had taken autoshop in high school. I was too intimidated, and my free periods were already filled up with music and arts classes anyways. It sure would be nice to understand wtf is going on under the hood of my car.

it's a sad commentary that this has stirred up so much controversy and ranting about gay people and..ahem.."bloody assholes". i grew up in the midwest in the '50s (!) and i can recall learning about the clownfish..of course, i had a catholic education so maybe those priests were trying to 'indoctrinate' us...but i think it was just mostly a science class lesson about animal reproduction that included an illustration of the awesome diversity of god's creation.

No one here seems to be defending this as an admirable and proper subject for public school instruction. Well, is it?

I'll raise my hand for this one.

I'll defend what was taught. I think Gender Studies is an admirable and proper subject for public school instruction. But I want other, competing ideas about gender to be taught alongside each other, to allow the children to discuss the theories and come to their own conclusion.

As is, it feels like indoctrination. Even if the topic is one you support, indoctrination is not the way to educate the youth.

@machos: thanks for the chuckle, but cute as i was back then, i couldn't get a priest to play with my weiner much less plow me from behind and, as far as i knew, the only reason they wanted me on my knees was to pray. better luck next lifetime i guess.

"Gawddamnit, just once - just ONCE - I wish somebody would show these people all the variations in an ass kicking."

I already knew them. I was openly gay in my rural high school and no one ever said a negative word to me, mostly because I made it clear that I wouldn't take any shit from anyone.

Our class president was a gay Jew. Of course, at that time the gay part wasn't known, probably not even to himself. But I knew. And I would have beat the crap out of anyone who messed with him, even though he wasn't my type. I was much more interested in the quarterback and his father, who was a gym teacher.

A number of people from my smallish high school turned out gay. One guy was a good friend. He was strikingly handsome yet he never did nearly as good with the girls as he could have. The rest of us never put it quite together why then. In college, he became the president of one of the largest fraternities at the flagship state university.

Fortunately, Oakland's schools already produce so many Rhodes Scholars that they have the time and money to spend on stuff like this, right?

Lessons on "all-girl geckos and transgender clownfish" are just so much junk science unless they explain the genetic mechanisms that give rise to such things ... like the fact that fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds don't have X and Y chromosomes, but mammals do. You think they'll explain that to the fourth-graders?

Your better argument would be the acceptance of homosexuality in places like Kandahar or ancient Greece. I would argue that in those places the ass-fucking and disease connection never took root.

Glad you mentioned Afghanistan.

We have a lot of aerial surveillance of that country, and much of the population is stuck several millenia back in development. So, no surprise that the rustic tribesmen don't quite understand what is happening.

Apparently, the guys back in southern Nevada running the drones have a great time watching the tribesmen do their thing with their flocks. They don't quite get that just because they can't see that UAV flying around at night above them, that doesn't mean that the guys back here can't see them just fine.

I grew up in Colorado, and we used to say that Wyoming was where men were men, but the sheep were nervous. Well, that sure seems to be the case in rural Afghanistan right now.

So, to further 7's point, why the (continuing I think, outside of Afghanistan and Wyoming) taboo against bestiality? My guess, if 7's point is valid, is that some of those STDs crossed the species barrier that way (likely not HIV, which appears to have crossed when we ate our closest remaining genetic relatives).

So, how long until our schools start teaching that bestiality is also just fine. After all, it has been around as long as we have had flocks of potential partners.

Oh, and as for homo dogs, I gave a young male dog to a female friend of mine last year. She was looking for a lap dog, and this one is maybe 40 lbs so far, and hasn't quite stopped growing.

She was not temperamentally suited for raising a dog, not having the patience to train it. It is now with her grandsons, who range from 2 to 9. And it is still untrained.

So, these young boys daily see Tuxie riding the other (male) dog around the yard, pumping away, and don't quite get it, yet. And he humps everyone's leg, and again, they don't quite get it. Yet.

but it's my understanding that much bullying is rooted in violations of gender norms

No, the bullies are bloody assholes.

I should be facetious (after all that 7 has said) and suggest that the opposite is more the case, that the victims of the bullying are the ones with that ailment.

But to the main point, I don't know on the female side, but that surely is the case on the male side, that a lot of bullying revolves around bending of sexual norms. Though I do think there is some of that in girl world too.

Young adolescent males are naturally very insecure as to their sexuality. They haven't gotten any. They are not sure when and if they ever will. Etc. So, calling them girls, girlish, or even homos, is esp. effective as a form of bullying.

So, maybe the motives are fine with this form of "instruction". The problem is that the teachers are operating at an intellectual level, and the kids are operating at an emotional level, and doing so in their own world, where the teachers are only really peripheral.

And, yes, I think that even at those tender ages, at least as they near the end of elementary school, they can detect PC BS, recognize it for being such, and immediately ignore it. They know it because they understand at some point that they were not the fruit of a homosexual union, or, or of congress with the lower animals (in the case I mentioned before in Afghanistan).

Besides, if bullies aren't going to use the bullied feelings of sexual inadequacy against them, they will just find something else to bully them about or with. PC reeducation has never been, and never will be, the solution to bullying.

Bullying is just one of those things that most of us have to learn to deal with. It doesn't stop when we exit puberty. Rather, we face it for the rest of our lives, because it works. I probably see it more than most, because I work in a field where there are lot of them. And some of them are very, very good at it. Again, because it works. It can make you money. A lot of money. And, if you haven't learned how to deal with bullies on a personal level, all by yourself, by the time you become an adult, they will eat you alive, if you find yourself near one of them. Which I probably do at least once a week.

So, much better if they taught bully proofing, which is what my kid learned it their private school, when bullied in the 3rd or 4th grade. Yes, they also worked with the bully. But that wouldn't have helped with the next bully, or the one after that, that my kid was going to face in life. Again, just one more of those things that is taught much better in many private schools (because many, if not most, parents who care about their kids enough to pay private school tuition are not going to keep their kids in an environment where bullying is rampant).

This "instruction" exists only to please the kind of people who make up the festival (or whatever it is) in The Castro (if you don't know what it is, there are picture on Zombietime (but only for the strong of stomach)) and it's one step removed from the idiots in Canada trying to raise a "genderless" child.

Your average 4th or 5th grader has no interest in "gender", especially anyone else's.

Because you can find examples of all kinds of behaviors in "nature", a lot of which would be abhorrent in any human society. Humans have cherry-picked a tiny subset of "natural" behaviors to consider 'moral' and 'lawful' (varies from society to society, of course). Whether that tiny subset is purely arbitrary, or based on some sort of coherent logic, is open for debate, of course.

These kids will grow up knowing all about trannies, fisting and the quickest, easiest way to get an abortion without their parents finding out. Math, history, science, etc.? That shit's just for dead white men.

It's ridiculous. Some years ago I thumbed through my niece and nephew's textbooks (5-7 grade, MA). They were just as bad as all the horror stories had led me to believe. Half a page on Abraham Lincoln, a full chapter on the AFL-CIO. The only picture in the WWII section was of a bombed out Hiroshima. The formation of the U.N. is what ended WW II, by the way. I did not know that.I've got a new batch of nephews coming along (2nd grade, so it'll be a while) in suburban Atlanta. I wonder what gems I'll find in their books.

My daughter learned about gender diversity on Monday. On Saturday, with her grandma, she bought a fishtank and two bettas. They sold her two female bettas because male bettas are aggressive and territorial. Male bettas will fight until only one is left. Not so female bettas my daughter was told.

Monday morning, one of her female bettas was swimming sideways with most of its fins eaten off. I put it out of its misery.

Thanks for the butch betta, fish store.

* * *

Really, it wrenched my heart to see her so upset. If there's a life lesson to be learned it is that nature is red in tooth and claw. Wild animals don't behave as described. Let the kids feed the clownfish to the geckos. Then they'll actually learn something about nature.

Palladian claimed, "And I agree with Skyler, even though I know he hates faggots."

When did I ever use that word? When did I ever express hatred? Disagreeing with a political agenda and recognizing that homosexuality is morally wrong does not imply hatred. Drinking too much is morally wrong also, but I don't hate alcoholics.

If we are to be completely faithful to the natural order, then we must normalize rape and other forms of involuntary exploitation.

We could also judge the behavior by its contribution to increasing the fitness of our species. In that regard, it is completely without merit. Not only does homosexual behavior not promote the viability of our species, but individuals, who engage in this behavior, consume limited resources which would otherwise be available to productive members of humanity.

On the other hand, since homosexual behavior engaged by consenting adults is entirely a voluntary act, and as such is not comparable to murder, rape, and other forms of involuntary exploitation, it can be tolerated by society. However, there is no valid reason to otherwise normalize this deviant behavior.

We can respect the individuals, and tolerate their behavior, without normalizing their actions.

There are other elements of the natural order which could also be normalized, but I don't think most people would accept crushing the skull and obliterating the brain matter of humans for matters of convenience.

Oh, wait, there are people who are seeking to normalize sacrifice of virginal human life (i.e., abortion). I wonder if they are the same people who advocate for normalizing other deviant behaviors in compliance with the natural order.

We have two Boston Terriers, about eight years old. They are litter mates, one male and one female. Tonight we had a mild thunderstorm and their reaction reminded of the difference between males and females. At the first peal of thunder, the female jumped in my lap and shivered, obviously expecting me to protect her. The male sidled up to me but did not jump in my lap even though I invited him. Instead he glared around with his eyes wide and snorting at the thunder. He seemed to be saying he was there to stand beside me and help defend the pack. He is a brave dog, he does not run away from gun fire or fireworks, he runs toward them.

I have heard it said, about a despicable man, that he has all the qualities of a dog except loyalty and bravery. My dogs have those qualities and I love them, both male and female.

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